Improvement of Figure of Merit Pb(Zr,Ti)O3–Pb(Zn,Ni,Nb)O3–Pb(In,Nb)O3 Piezoelectric Ceramics

Figure of merit the product of piezoelectric charge constant and the piezoelectric voltage constant—d 33 × g 33 in piezoelectric energy harvesting systems are critical measures in energy harvester applications. It is difficult to achieve high figure of merit because of the interdependence of d 33 and the relative dielectric constant, ε r . Until now, the prohibitive amount of effort required to solve this problem has led to it being considered an unsolvable issue. Lead zirconate titanate ceramic, Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 , has been reported to exhibit high values of d 33 and ε r . However, to be employed as piezoelectric energy harvester, a candidate material is required to exhibit both high piezoelectric charge coefficient and high piezoelectric electric voltage coefficient simultaneously. To enhance the figure of merit of Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 -based materials, dopants have also been considered. Pb(Zn,Ni,Nb)O 3 - added Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 , Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 –Pb(Zn,Ni,Nb)O 3 ceramic has been reported to exhibit a high d 33 value of 561 pC/N. It's dielectric constant has also been reported to be low at 1898. In this study, Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 –Pb(Zn,Ni,Nb)O 3 –Pb(In,Nb)O 3 was investigated in the context of enhancing the figure of merit of Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 -based materials. During the proposed process, we increased the corresponding figure of merit by adding Pb(In,Nb)O 3 material. Besides exhibiting a low dielectric constant, the Pb(In,Nb)O 3 material was also observed to exhibit high d 33 × g 33 as the proposed doping increased the value of d 33 greatly, while maintaining the dielectric constant (Yan, J., et al., 2019. Large engancement of trans coefficient in PZT-PZN energy harvesting system through introducing low ε r PIN relaxor. Journal of the European Ceramic Society, 39 , pp.2666–2672). Further, we conducted an optimization experiment by controlling the doping concentration and the sintering temperature.